50 People Try To Froth Milk

For this episode of Basic Skills Challenge, we brought 50 people together and asked each of them to don their barista cap and froth some milk.

Now granted, there's no one right method.

But good golly there are some absolutely wrong methods.

- I don't have a straw, so Ican't blow bubbles into it.[classical music]- So today we're gonna froth milk.- What, what was the word?- Froth some milk, froth some milk,froth some milk, froth some.

[laughs]- What even is frothy milk?What is that supposed to look like?- Kind of outline thebowl with some coffee.- Pour a little in.- Oh, let's do this.- I need momentum.I need speed, right?I need speed, I need momentum.So I need to use this thing.- Oh, oh, oh ho ho ho.[machine whirring]- Worth it, worth it, worth it, worth it.- This is a great way to wakeeverybody up in the morning.- Is froth that thingthat's on like the edgeof a rabid dog's mouths?- Eh, eh.- Why is this?- Ooh [laughs].- To turn it like this?- I like mason jars.And maybe that'll help me out.- I feel really good about this.I don't feel as confident anymore.- Oh this has some kindof electronic, okay.- This is so satisfying, wow.Should I become a barista?- I don't even know how to describe it,it's like a whirlpool in there.- Oh my god, milk freaks me out so much.- Up and down?- But you don't wantedit frothed too much.Because then it becomes cheese.- No, that did nothing.- Oh, something's happening.- Wait, it went away!- All the foam went awayas soon as I finished that,so we're in a sad, sad, state.- That's disgusting.- I'm going to put my coffee, why not.[playful music]- Yeah, that didn't really, hmm.- Does anyone have a microscope?We might be able to seesome froth here, folks.- Oh look, it's so small.It's a very slight cloud.- No it's gone, there's no foam.- You just have to use your imagination.- It went way cooler in my head.- There's no froth.- I'm disappointed.

[sighs]- Like a good love affair,it doesn't last very long.- If you look at some of the corners,you squint your eyes.The reminiscence of what was once froth.- Foam-less coffee.- Ack, disgusting.- It looks like a sickcup of coffee, frankly.- What's the difference?Just put the milk in the coffeeand call it a day people.Something in my eye,it's probably the coffee.- All right let's froth some milk.- Oh it's warm.It's warm milk.- It's already warm, perfect.- Pour the milk in here.- I used to be a barista, sothis'll be really embarrassingif I don't get this.- I know that this is a milk frother.- It's a frother.It spins really fast.- Yeah, okay.- Eh heh heh heh.[laughs evilly]- This is actually really fun.- Yeah, there we go.Move through the milk,kinda like go up and down.- To get some more air into it.- Where the milk is, betweenthe foam and the milk.- You wanna establisha bit of a whirlpool.A whole bunch of little bubbles.- This whirlpool is reallyvery hypnotic.

[laughs]- Can I over-froth it?Let's find out.- And I'm gonna find outhow immersion blenders work.- Okay, something's happening.- Ooh!- The quantity lookslike it's larger becauseI'm beating air into the milk.- I see bubbles.- Well, that's my cue.- I don't think I havethe strength to do thisfor 20 minutes.- You really need armmotion on this though,like eh.- A hand mixer would be nice.- Oh, it says easy frother.- I'm gonna start usingthis little frother.Just pumped to here,so I'm gonna pour likethis amount of milk.- And do that.- Bop it, twist it.- Now that's frothy.- Oh, it's very frothy, Imight've gone a little longerthan I needed to.- Frothing out of the mouthlike a Fox news anchor.- How do I look?- I can hear the bubblespopping so trust me,it's nice and frothy.[imitates sizzling]- Tilt this coffee a little bit,and just pour some ofthis froth milk in there.- Oh, oh.- Ooh that foam doe.- Okay.- Aw yeah.- Look at that.[gasps]- It does the thing.- Yay.- It's like a mildly shitty cappuccino.- Oh, I love it.It's a snowy landscape.- It's like espresso,cappuccino, Americano.Froth?- Aw, it's so pretty, look at it.- Delightful layer of froth up there.- See the nice little line?It's all froth.[playful music rewinding]- Today we're going to frothmilk for our coffee drink here.When you go to a coffee shop,they're gonna use a machinethat steams the milk.It's really the best methodto get really nicely frothed milk.Because it does two things.It forces that steam intothe milk while heating itat the same time.But if you're at home, youcan get a very similar resultby making sure that youstart with warm milk.And then we're gonnause a tool that's goingto agitate the milk in some way.So that could be as simple as whisk.But that's gonna take youa really, really long time.We actually have thismilk frother right here,which works in the same way as a whisk.The milk has a protein structure in it.And that protein structure is what's goingto help trap the air inside of the milk.It doesn't necessarily matterwhere we froth the milk,all the way down at thebottom or all the way up hereat the top, except, it canbe a little messy at the top.And what I'm looking for isthe milk to start to growin size.When I have that nice,stable foam structure,then that's all there is to it.Then we're just gonna gentlypour it into our coffee drink.And we've go our nice homemade latte.- Frothed milk.- Milk froth.- This layer right here,in case you can't tell.This layer, the frothylayer, that's the froth.- Fancy coffee.- A little cappuccino.- I always love when the milk like kind ofgoes in with the coffee.- Oh, I haven't had coffee today.Oh that's good.